Cavalrymen and slingshooters

This panel is the only surviving fragment of a relief from the Southwest Palace at Nineveh. A 19th-century drawing of the whole relief – the only image we have of it – shows that it depicted the siege of a walled and turreted city; the king was on the scene on his war-chariot. Soldiers armed with slings rarely appear in Assyrian reliefs. Only three examples of this subject are known; one comes from the Northern Palace of Assurbanipal, the other two from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib.